Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook’s signature is its Focused view, which separates important messages from the less significant across each account connected. It leaves out email from social media sites, marketing emails, and other not that important ones. So, you will not see gray mail, auto-generated messages going up in your inbox.

This Focused inbox is on by default, which let you have excellent user experience with no need to dig around and look for the way to turn this feature on in the settings. Also, if you do not like it, disable it, though I wouldn’t recommend that.

Another way to enhance your email experience is by swipe gestures customization. When you want to process the email message quickly, do so swiping left or right. These actions are set by default and will archive your messages or schedule them to appear later as a new letter at an exact time you want. If you delete more than you archive, you can set the swipe gesture to perform different functions. It is helpful in the battle against the email messages overload and spares you some time.

Design 4/5

The Microsoft Outlook’s interface is functional and easy to use, but its design is bland. There are pages of black and white text, which sometimes accented by some blue or gray colors. Comparing to lively and colorful Gmail app, Outlook seems a bit humble. The line spacing has less room than Gmail, and the margins are thinner in Outlook.

So, design in Microsoft Outlook is not a strong side as it is a little cramped.

Usability 5/5

Once you’ve opened the Outlook app, you’ll see some tabs along the bottom of the interface:

• Male;
• Calendar;
• Files;
• People;
• Settings.

Calendar is a rare feature for the email app, so after checking it out, I’ll say that it pays attention to detail. There is a little arrow located in the bottom right corner and it spins resembling a compass and showing how far you are navigating from the current day. When you tap on it, it throws you back to today. You have the menu located at the top allowing to check an agenda, your listed appointments, and also a one-day or three-day view. If you tap it, the list of all your calendars appears and you can choose which ones will display on the screen.

The Files section is useful as well. It shows files from your accounts in the list. There are the name of the file, its size, the time you received it, and also the sender’s name. Outlook does a decent job helping find attachments, showing the recent ones first.

You are able to connect it to numerous services, including IMAP, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo Mail, Exchange. Plus, there is an option to connect it to Google Drive and Dropbox, as well as OneDrive for swift access to your files to attach to a message.

The selection of various services you are able to integrate Outlook with looks impressive.

Cross-platform use 5/5

Microsoft Outlook is available for Android and iOS devices equally, providing the same set of features and having pretty much the same design. On both platforms it works fine, so whether you are an Android or iOS user, don’t think twice before installing it.

The app requires Android version 4.1 and up or iOS 9.0 and up.

In-app purchases

Microsoft Outlook requires no charge to download it and does not have any kind of in-app purchases. Just install it and use without any limitations. All features are available at no charge.

Conclusion

Microsoft did a great job and deserved a lot of credit for this Outlook app. It offers useful and convenient features such as calendar which makes the emailing experience more productive. The Focused view of the inbox is excellent service for everyone who receives lots of emails and needs to sort them out perfectly. If you need total control over your inbox, as well as the all services that is around it, Outlook is an excellent tool for it.

And the built-in calendar lets you switch from an invitation in a message to making an appointment without any additional apps. And if you’ve got Microsoft Exchange server at work, there is no reason at all not to get this app.

Outlook sets a high standard, so we hope it won’t come unnoticed by the competitors and they will do whatever they need to catch up. It’s always great for us, users, to have a wide selection of quality apps to choose from.

The only minor complaint is bland design, which is certainly could look prettier, but Outlook compensates this downside with its productivity.